Policy News

A bill to boost telehealth coverage in Medicare Advantage plans would reduce healthcare expenditures by $80 million over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO’s cost estimate of H.R. 3727 is welcome news...

One of the last states to formally establish a telehealth policy has been busy this month. The Florida Telehealth Advisory Council, created by the state’s Legislature in March 2016, has put together a draft report that, among other things,...

Following up on legislative action taken earlier this year to align the state with the rest of the nation, the Texas Medical Board has proposed amending its telemedicine and telehealth rules that would loosen the reins on doctors wanting to treat...

Two-thirds of the states in the US may have laws to promote telehealth and telemedicine coverage by private payers, but many of those laws are weakly written, giving payers too much discretion to set their own ground rules and turning providers...

Healthcare organizations and advocacy groups are ganging up on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in a bid to compel more telehealth and telemedicine coverage. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), American...

Two bills designed to improve telehealth and telemedicine access sailed through Congressional subcommittee reviews on Wednesday. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health approved H.R. 1148, the Furthering Access to Stroke Telemedicine...

The American Medical Group Association is lobbying for more Medicare acceptance of telehealth, by recommending five new CPT codes and a demonstration of the value of virtual coaching platform for those with diabetes. In a letter issued on Sept....

Telehealth and telemedicine can make a positive impact on the nation’s healthcare system if they demonstrate improvement in health outcomes, processes and cost, quality measures are widely accepted and the definitions of measurement are...

Healthcare providers may be using more telehealth and telemedicine than ever before, but Medicare Is still a significant barrier to growth. An analysis of the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services’ 2016 payments for telehealth and...

Healthcare providers in Massachusetts are urging state officials to make telehealth more accessible to meet a growing lack of access to mental health services. At a recent roundtable, representatives of several health systems lamented that the...

Nurses will be able to apply for a license to practice telehealth in multiple states in five months. The National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) has set Jan. 19, 2018 as the go-live date for the Enhanced Nurse Licensure Compact (eNLC)....

In a bit of good news-bad news for the telemedicine industry, federal officials said they will reimburse healthcare providers for their telemedicine expenses in a bundled payment program – even as they announced plans to scale back that...

President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement this week to declare a national emergency on opioid abuse could thrust telemedicine and mHealth into the spotlight. If and when it happens, the declaration would “enable the federal government...

Federal officials have unveiled a plan to give VA doctors the authority to treat veterans via telemedicine no matter where those veterans are located. In a ceremony attended by President Donald Trump this past week, Department of Veterans Affairs...

A Congressional Budget Office analysis of a bill that would expand telestroke services may have hit upon a common roadblock in the advancement of telehealth and telemedicine legislation: The government won’t always see a quick ROI. The...

Two more states now have telemedicine laws on the books, adding to the ranks of states clearly defining what can and can’t be called telehealth and telemedicine. Minnesota’s new regulations became law on August 1. S.F. 1353, unanimously...

Congress and telemedicine advocates are jumping on the bandwagon to open up so-called TV white space for telehealth and other uses. A bipartisan group of 43 members of Congress is urging the Federal Communications Commission to designate unused...

With the CONNECT for Health Act showing no signs of positive momentum on Capitol Hill, telehealth-friendly legislators are trying a new tactic: Introduce several telemedicine bills aimed at different facets of Medicare, with the hope that at...

Digital diabetes coaching providers are joining forces in an effort to convince the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to include mHealth in the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program. Some virtual coaching is included in the MDPP, which...